Resurrection

Thinking about it ... or maybe having a new one.

Dunno why. I'm actually writing from a party, an icemaker party. We're all here at ice class. Trouble is, you know, the people I know ... the people who read this blog back in the day... they're not so much a part of my life any more. And the people who have taken up that place are people who inhabit the same small circles I inhabit now. People for whom stories might best not be put in print ... especially if they're my stories.

Who the fuck is introspective at a party, anyhow? ;)

Moose Butt! Now available in t-shirt form!

As you get older, I've noticed, people stop giving you presents. They tell you happy birthday, which is perfectly awesome, and insist that you take them out to dinner and gorge on Italian food, which is also awesome. But presents become optional.

Sometimes, this is good. Who needs a bunch of ugly chachkes? Plus, the few presents you do get are quite nice, because they were probably gotten not out of obligation but out of a sense of, "Ohhh! This would be perfect for Sass!"

Sometimes, this gives people a little too much freedom. My mother loved the picture of the mooning moose so much she put it on a t-shirt for me. It arrived just in time for my birthday.

(April 13, for those of you with a 2007 calendar. Only 361 shopping days left!)

She said she just barely managed to control her urge to have them print right below the picture: (Name of location): Not all its cracked up to be.

I wish I'd had a camera, because I saw the most dramatic sight last night. The house was fully involved upon arrival, and the initial reports of a boy trapped inside had been -- thankfully -- followed by another report of the boy being found outside, doing fine. When he had called 911, he had been on the second floor, trapped.

I was working my hose line around the back side of the house, which rose a tall two stories straight up in an unbroken line. From the second-story window, flames shot out, the glass broken several minutes before. Smoke billowed out the eves; the roof was starting to collapse. And there was one of those chain emergency ladders hanging from the empty window silhouetted in flame.

The View From my Window

This pair is driving the dogs crazy as they happily graze away on whatever is under the snow.

Kneeling to eat! This is the calf of the mother-daughter pair.

This is the mother, below. I can get this close because I'm on the second story. Don't try this at home, unless you have a second story door that opens onto nothing.




And this moose is telling me what she thinks of the whole thing:

Never aceept a drink from a science teacher

Part 2

Okay, now I have three minutes to wrap up this long story, so you'll get a short version.

Doug came back with the skidoo, and headed off with N, and I put on my skis. He said it was no more than 5 km more, and as it was getting dark, I asked in a small pitiful voice if he would return for me if it did get dark. And I skied. Through the flat open spruce area, usually sunny and warm, now with the wind slicing through the opening in the forest. Into the swamp, blessedly free of the wet overflow that was there on the othe two trips. Up a short steep hill, forcing my tired feet to herringbone; when one ski got stuck in the soft snow I tumbled ass over teakettle on the steep side of the cliff and lay there, feet in the air, ordering myself not to give in. It was only a few minutes later that I heard the whine of the skidoo, and, relucantant to give up getting to the springs under my own power but exhausted clean through and chilled to the bone, I hopped on and let Doug ride behind me the last kilometre or so.

I was too tired to unpack, too cold to do much but get in the springs. Got out, built a campfire (the wood helpfully gathered by a hopeful neighbour who had tried repeatedly to light his fire with gasoline before giving up), had some soup, went to bed. Spent a chilly night even with Doug and the two dogs in a small tent, hot pack tucked bewteen by breasts putting out a pitiful stream of heat. Evey half hour or so I woke, shook the hot pack to life, and returned to a restless sleep. The wind picked up during the night.

By morning, I was ready to stumble, half-frozen, into the hot springs again, and stayed there until well after noon. N, I suspect, had been in there most of the time -- after me in the evening and well before me in the morning. I stayed in until my head ached with low blood pressure, the heat all gone to my skin, stepped out during a lull in the wind. Even in the lull, I could see snow whipping up from the river ice nearby, felling it landing on my skin with burning pricks of cold. I dressed, top first, pulling a frozen shirt ove my head. Polarfleece. Second polarfleece. Hat over hair whipped to frosty froth. Hood. Gloves, thin glove liners, the only dry ones left. Then polarfleece leggings, dry socks, and ski boots frozen solid overnight.

M's tent was still up, and the four women huddled in there for warmth as Doug took the first load of gear up to the overflow to cache it there. N was not going to even try to ski -- someone asked her if she wanted to, but it was quickly vetoed by the rest of us. She was shivering inside the tent, even holding hot chocolate, sitting under a blanket. The only way to test the degree of her hypothermia was to crack jokes occasionally and see if a smile appeared on her half-hidden face. I didn't say anything, but the truth must come out sooner or later -- I was worried. I really was. When we put N on Doug's snowmachine, I made him promise to talk to her, to watch her carefully, to put her in a car when they got back to the pulloff and make her turn on the heat. And that was when I still thought it might be warm enough outside to be comforable in the car. with the sun shining through the windows.

I set off soon after that, leavning the last bits of tearinf down the camp to the three who were in shape to do it. Doug would zip ahead with N, and he passed me soon, and M and Y would ski behind. I would ski at my own pace, presumably reaching the car well bfore the others. This went according to plan, and a few mor mistakes later, I was at the car. By that time my left leg was frozen from an leaky valve on my water bag that had gone unnotice until too late, until my pants were frozen solid with ice from the slow drip. Y broke a ski binding right near the start of the trail, and was discovered by Doug, who gave her a ride.

I promised everyone that by evening, we would think it was a wonderful trip, sitting in the diner over looking the mountains and chowing down on the famous pie served there, and I was not far wrong. N's hands were shaking with the effort of her skiing, M's face was chapped with windburn, Doug was bruised and sore from wrestling with, and falling off, the snowmachine. I was chilled and exhausted and sore with those sore spots I only get from cross-country skiing, but I had an extra day to rest.

I am still trying to unpack, to find gear from the trip that I need right now, and when I called M to ask if she'd seen my wind pants, she asked me if I thought it had been a good trip. I hesitated.

"I do!" She insisted.

And so memory begins to work its magic. This was our third trip there, and within a week -- by the time I back in school and working my usual ten-hour days -- it will certainly have turned into the best. Or one of the three best, anyhow.

Hot Springs Trip: A Terrible Idea, I mean, Adventure, in Two Parts (Part I)

Day before yesterday, we set out for an overnight trip to a relatively local ski-in hot springs. "We" refers to a group of assorted random folks: me, Doug, my good friend M, M's new girlfriend, N, from down south, and one of M's local friends, Y. It was spring break and the only free time I have in a busy school year, and of course M would want to show off the Real North to her lovely lady.

The trouble with planning these camping trips in advance is that they really should be weather-dependent, but we didn't think about that. We only though about the fact the weekend weather report said it was going to warm up, although the bitter chill in the air Tuesday morning should have made us question that knowledge.

So the five of us set out early in the morning with one skidoo, four pairs of skis, four dogs and a toboggan sled piled into two vehicles. Having fortified ourselves with a hearty berakfast, we drove the three hours up a highway the begins out paved and nearly ice-free, but soon descends into ice-covered gravel. The wind was whipping up little drifts of snow near the summit even as the snowplow passed, and patches of aufeis on the road provided an occasional slippery surprise. Needless to say, I love this highway and this drive.

At the trailhead, we tumbled out in an excited mass of wagging tails and camping gear, and immediately proceeded to finish packing, throw our gear in the sled, rethink it and take out another shirt to put on, throw our gear in the sled again, realize the sled would need to make two trips, and finally send Doug off on the skidoo with a first load of gear. Naturally, he would be much faster than the rest of us, who were skiing.

The ski was about 4 hours, assuming M's pace from the last time we did the trip, but fluffy granular snow made the going slow. I broke trail, having somehow wound up as the fastest skier in the group -- thanks, I am certain, to my shiny new skis that had been just broken in the day before. Ah, the day before -- the day N out on a pair of skis for the first time and did an excellent job of staying upright. Which brings us to the secret plan underlying the first plan: that N would go as far along the 12-km trail as she could, then catch a ride with Doug.

We descended to the river, which was frozen solid with two feet of snow overlying the ice, and crossed into a sunny field dotted with black spruce. I took a breather and waited for the rest to ctach up. After establishing that the plan would go like this -- we'd each go at our own pace and meet up occasionally -- I headed out to look for a second sunny spot in which to take a break. After about an hour, a straight stretch of trail let the sun show in the crevice between the trees, and I laid down a few spruce boughs to rest on. About fifteen minutes later, Y came along. I asked her how the other two were doing and she said she had no idea. So we headed down the trail again, planning to find a sunny spot in which to make a fire and wait.

It may have been another half hour when I saw the sled at the top of a long hill, with Doug's helmet atop it but no one in sight. Cresting the hill, I looked down. Almost straight down. The trail faded to nothing as it disappeared between thick spruce forest and a glacier-sized patch of slippery overflow ice. Floundering in the fluff of snow was Doug and his skidoo.

So we pulled. We pushed. We prodded. There was a ledge of ice to go over before getting onto the trail, on a steep uphill in snow the texture of quicksand. We turned the machine around, tried to go over the uphill side of the ice. One ski slid off the mound, and Doug tried to wrestle it out, stepping knee-deep into the freezing pool hiding on the uphill side of the overflow. We went back the first way. Doug gunned the machine, got one ski up onto the ledge, got another ski -- no, it slid down and smashed into a tree.

We decided it was time to wait. With a few more people, we could pull the machine up over the ledge, but it would take some weight, especially with the slippery footing.

I gathered birchbark and dry spruce boughs covered in spanish moss, all brittle in the winter air. Clearing out a spot beside the trail, I laid my pile of kindling to one side, chose a few curls of bark and tiny branches, and clicked the lighter. Nothing. It was that cold. I held the lighter in my bare hands, beather on the side of it. Clicked it again. A spark this time. My hands were getting cold. In fact, the rest of me was getting cold, with the sun behind the trees now and a breeze picking up. I clicked the lighter again, and got a flame.

The fire caught instantly, and I started to feed it with larger branches. If you're going to get stuck, you might as well get stuck in a black spruce forest, surrounded by half-rotten sticks of birch, the dry boughs on the underside of the spruce trees, and dead sticks of alder. The hip-deep snow and steeps slopes made going hard, but I could feed the fire all night and day if I had to. And gathering wood kept me warm.

Y came skiing up just after I got the fire started, but we knew we had to wait for the rest of the party to get the skidoo unstuck. We gathered wood and fed the fire, put a cup of hot water on -- the cocoa powder was in the second load -- and waited. Soon, M and N came slogging up the steep hill, looking exhausted. I wasn't sure how far along we were -- over halfway, definitely -- but later estimated that they had made it eight kilometers. Eight! N's first time on skis! No wonder she looked so exhausted as she crested the hill, not to mention chilled to the bone. The temperature, which has been below freezing in full sunshine in the heat of afternoon, had dropped to around -15 C by this time.

We sat N down by the fire, shared the cup of hot water, and made a plan. It would get dark soon, and M and Y needed to get moving. Doug was headed back to the truck to pick up the second load of gear, and would pick up N here on his way back. She had reached the phase of exhaustion at which, when you fall, you can't think of a way or a reason to get up. You just lie there, wondering why someone can't save you.

I suppose if we were smart, we would have simply turned around. But it never even crossed my mind to give up the hot springs, to curtail our trip in any way. We had already each figured the second night of camping was a bust, but no one thought to give up this one night. If anyone did, they didn't voice the idea.

So M and Y set off down the trail toward the hot springs, Doug set off on his way back to truck (having used the full weight of four of us to pull the skidoo over the ledge), and N and I sat down to wait. I forced an energy bar down her throat -- breakfast, plentiful as it was, had worn off long before and there was no way she could keep warm without food. I gathered some more firewood, enough to last at least until Doug got back. I knocked down two dead trees twice as tall as myself, hanging on the trunks with all my weight to make them fall, and piled snow up on the windward side of the fire. The wind was steady now and cold. I used long fresh spruce boughs to build a windbreak, and finally, somewhat tired but thankfully not yet chilled, sat down with N to wait for Doug's return.

I totally forgot!

I would wrap this up in some poetry, but I'm not too much in the mood. So I'll just too my own horn:

I got Medic of the Year again this year :) I'm not entirely sure I deserved it -- I'm not entirely sure anyone deserved it -- but I was nominated by a couple of regular old members of the department for my hard work, and that was really touching.

Time-warp factor 9 .... Engage!

I still am sufferning from blogger's block, so I thought it would be fun to point out that we're engaged in a chipper debate with a troll in Chicken Chat.

He introduced himself as being not a troll, and then somewhat later explained that he had to go pee, which he would do standing up. I'll spare you the meat of his arguments, because you've heard it all before.

His text is bold and bright red.

Sometimes, when I'm in a ruminating mood, I ruminate on how feminine my ways of communicating are, full of the disclaimers and dodges and deferring and all that bullshit. Sometimes I think about how I'm still perceived as a bitch, my native east coast edge brushing a little too sharply on some people's delicate skin. And I walk this line between feeling I'm too sugary-sweet for my own liking and I'm too blunt for everyone else's, and wonder why I even care.

I'm going to practice being mean again. Mean Sass. I like her better than I like this new one, and if I'm moving back east I'd better brush up anyhow.

He is now bashing someone for her use of "vulgarities" in civilsed discourse. He seems to think he cannot argue with someone like that, because it brings down the tone of the conversation.

I love the snobbish brush-offs that people give, even while admitting that I do it myself. After all, I put in a few digs about his typing, and we all know how that's calling the kettle black.

One thing I have learned, in my laid-back west coast persona, is how to laugh at myself. I used to do it because everyone else was, and I didn't want to seem like a poor sport, but at some point it started to sink in. I have flaws, and sometimes my flaws are hysterically funny. Quite often they result in Fruedian slips of the type at which I love to laugh. I can't always do it, but on a good day I can, and it's a gift.

For fun, I had Doug come over and type that he was a man -- so I wouldn't be lying, you know. Apparently it was unclear to the troll, and he's been demanding that I tell him whether I'm a man. Several times. It's very important to him for some reason.

I guess one of the reasons I'm bisexual is that, on some level, I don't see a difference between men and women. One another level, I do see differences, but they're usually tiny little variations on the mean in a huge bell curve. And part of it is maybe my fear of never getting to be the man and reap those rewards as long as I'm in a heterosexual partnership.

And with that, I've given myself a hell of a lot to chew on. More than I can do here and now, while I'm wait with bated breath as this troll freaks out about whether or not I an dangling a penis between my possibly manly legs. Love it.

One reason I love my mommy

Once when I was younger, we were driving home as the snow fell silently in huge flakes through the barren branches of the trees. She pulled over the car so we could watch the magic of this snowfall, and she began to recite:

"Whose woods these are, I think I know
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with beer"

I've got a question

Of all the things I think I should be capable of but am not, addiction is one of them. I never knew this before last night. It seems like it should be easy to get into the habit of taking one drink after a stressful day, then another, until you're keeping the bottle in your nightstand for your morning eye-opener and hiding alcohol in every nook and cranny of your house. But it's not. If I finish a bottle of wine this weekend, I'll forget to buy another for next weekend. And I've got too much that I'd risk by even smoking a joint these days, and anyhow I'm not really sure if I like it or not.

So what makes me different from my dad, who numbed his path through marriage and children and everything else in life with copious application of alcohol? What makes me different from my students who come in after lunch in a reeking cloud, put their head down on the desk, and zone out for the entire eighty-minute class?

Even in the depths of my worst depression, all I wanted was for someone to pull me out of the fog and give me back my mind and my life. My ability to feel and to do and to think. Even in the worst of my pain, I never thought to soothe it away or do anything but stagger through it. I am not saying this is the best way, or even the best way for me, but I've made it through some long dark times and come out the other aide with nothing more than a few scars and a sense of the heavy weight of being me. And a sense that that weight was a burden I could carry, no matter how rough the trail became.

So, I don't know how people become addicted to drugs. I don't know whether it's a hedonism gone out of control, or a desire to escape. I don't know why it happens to some people, but not to others. I don't know how a man my age would find himself arguing with the cops about his state of mind, lying on his chesterfield half-dressed, much too thin and much too old, track marks up and down his arm. I don't know how a woman my age, too thin and too scared, could stand there while we talked him into getting in the ambulance, how they could both not notice that their little girl was crouched in the corner behind the monitor heater, small enough to make herself invisible.

This what broke my heart, because I'm not talking about someone I saw on an after-school special: that someone might not be able to hold themselves together for their daughter. That both parents would go out partying while they had this life they were responsible for. I am trying not to stand in judgement, I am trying to understand, I am trying to come up with any other picture than that of a child who instinctively, silently, quickly knew where to hide, who hid with the fluidity of one who has done it many times before, of a little girl who wanted to become invisible, and knew how.

Whew

Whew, it's made it up into the minues single digits. I was beginning to feel as if I was in jail the past week or so, when it was so cold even I could barely stay outside for 20 minutes at a time.

And I was grumpy. Grumpy grumpy grumpy, and so was everyone else who even bothereed to wake up.

But I think things should be getting better. It was light today when I drove home after 4, and I realized it will now be light when I drive home every for the rest of the school year. Such a sense of hope, a feeling of the end of the tunnel. Even in a good winter, even a winter-lover, has a feeling of bracing all winter. Of bracing against something. And a feeling of hope when it becomes obvious that winter is slowly losing the battle,

Cold snap

It's been warm this winter, by local standards. Hardly below about -20 C / -5 F, and much of the time well above that. But I took a walk tonight with the pups and the Doug and all that had changed. It started out fine up at the house, and I even called into town to see if there was an inversion yet. But it was only a couple of degrees cooler at the airport, so I decided there clearly wasn't one.

We went around a nice little loop that I thought was 3 miles, an easy short 3 miles, and started walking downhill. And up a bit. And then more down. And some more down. The full moon threw our shadows into sharp relief. Doug's beard gleamed white with frost. My cheeks started to freeze, and the tip of my nose where I had frostbit it earlier this winter. The dogs fur frosted over, and still we went slowly down.

At the pond, we did not linger to look at the light as bright as day in the clearing. We started up the other side, a silent death-march feeling having overtaken our outing. Walking uphill, we knew, would feel warmer, as we worked our chilled muscles.

But uphill was not warmer. A cold wind blew, rushing down the steep slope. Our faces froze and our eyelashes glued together. Looking out across the trees, a white line gleaming in the moonlight, we could not see a needle or a branch move. The wind blew only on us. We realized, gradually, it was the sinking of cold air into the valley. It was moving down the hill so quickly it made a wind we could feel.

We broke out of the trees about fifteen minutes later, less than a mile from home and basking in the relative warmth. It felt almost balmy when we left the slope of the valley for the relatively open hillside of our road. As we walked the final stretch home along this walk that turned out to be quite a bit longer than planned -- possibly four miles and well over an hour -- all I could think was, "Damn, we're wimpy this year." A little bit of global warming and we all turn into wusses. Used to be that this thirty below stuff was no big deal at all.

Fields of snow

Once, I was driving through Saskatchewan, and the sun was getting low. Off in he distance stood an old farmhouse, now abandoned and leaning precariously away from the wind. A single tree stood next to it, branches stretching to the lee. The house must have been a half mile away, but its shadow stretched out the road. I had to pull my car over just to stand in the shadow and soak it in. The earth there was so flat and treeless that I was standing in a shadow half a mile long. As I looked in any direction I could see nothing but farm fields stretching out, broken only by a two-lane highway running east to west as straigth as a shadow. I felt as if I was standing in the center of the earth, and I could see it curve and turn away from the light as night fell.

The tundra has that sort of magnificence, raised to an even greater degree. Even in an empty field, the evidence of people is obvious. The fields are plowed and planted; the bales of hay lie at neatly spaced intervals. On the tundra, the marks of civilization are thin ribbed tracks in the snow. From thirty kilometres away, a faint light pokes its head above the ground. It is the airport tower, and it is the closest structure for an houir in one direction and three house in the other.

As the town gets closer, it becomes ovbious what interlopers we are, imposing the geometry of houses and roads and airports on an arbitrary patch of land. In summer, it is thaw lakes and cotton grass and wilflowers and moss and the sheet-metal exoskeletons of homes and stores and schools. In the winter, it is a field of drifted snow the colour of sky and the bright boxes of schools, stores and homes. But wind packs snow up under the eaves and the cold grows frost on the walls, and if you step behind a building, if you step down off the raised gravel bed of the road, your thoughts are swallowed by the flat reach of ocean, tundra, and sky.

The tundra is so often referred to as barren, a frozen wasteland, especially by those who are hoping to exploit for the petroleum riches that lie beneath. It would be easy to agree, listening to the silence that is bigger than the howl of wind in your ears, or looking at snowfields that drop off the horizon. It is simple to see barrenness in the dead grass that pokes out on the windward side of a riverbank for eight months of the year, or the hundreds of kilometres one can drive without seeing a single living creature.

But the tundra is not so much barren as subtle and easy to miss. After eight months of hibernation, the snow sinks into a spongy field of life less than knee high. You cannot stand on the road or in a building and see it. You have to walk out and feel the earth sucking at your shoes. You have to lie down on a hillside, put your face close to ground, spread your fingers out to feel the crumble of lichens and mosses.

The lichens are bright orange, pale green, black, and red. The mosses are varied, a tangled forest of what appears to be seaweed and grass and miniature spruce trees less than a hand high. There are wildflowers smaller than your pinky fingernail and the colour of heavy cream. There are the fuits of kinnickinnick, crowberry, lingonberry, tundra blueberry, cloudberry, trailing blackberry, bearberry in shades ranging from the translucent fleshy red of a supermarket tomato to opaque black with the lustre of metal. There are grasses and sedges that grow only three inches high, and one that come up to your knees in the boggy spots. There are willows, dozens of species of willows, that grow only on riverbanks or only in standing water or only on drained slopes or everywhere and anywhere that they can gain their shallow footholds.

There are spiders, and insects, and in some places even a tiny species of frog. There are shrews and mice and the lacey burrows of ground squirrels. There are snowshoe hares as large as the foxes and lynx that prey on them. There are caribou herds that number in the tens of thousands. There are the footprints of the wolves that will not let you see them. There are musk oxen. There are ptarmigan and ravens and flocks of starlings and the seasonal visitors of Canada geese and swans and cranes. There are polar bears and seals that bridge the gap between land and sea, and there is a sea as rich as any southern waters even beneath six feet of pack ice.

There is the arctic mirage, the cold layered air that makes islands appear in the sky, that cuts mountains into stacks of blocks. There is the faturelessness of that landscape that makes you confuse the blue-white of the snow with the blue-white of a cloudy sunless day. There is the sun that lingers just below the horizon, that teases and haunts. There are reasons to be afraid, good ones and bad ones.

And there is the scale: the vastness of land and ocean that drops out of sight around the curve of the earth and makes you feel huge and tiny at the same time. It forces you to see yourself, and think about yourself, in the context of a seemingly endles wilderness. And, ultimately, that alone may be what determines whether one sees nothingness or plenty, barrenness or diverse riches, in the tundra.

A pathetic attempt to pacify you...

Since I am too tired to write, here are some pictures:



Welcome to the sunny Northwest Territories! Well, it's sunny for most of the year, just not right now, sorry. And it's in a section of the highway known as "Hurricane Alley," for reasons involving driving the truck at a 45-degree angle just to keep it on the road. Well, probably on the road, which is invisible under the blowing snow. At least we kept within sight of the snow poles on the edge of the road.



This is the entrance to the ice road from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk. The road goes along the Mackenzie River for some time, then jogs to the right and apparently follows the coast along the Arctic Ocean for a while longer. It's about 175 km all told.

There has been some heavy snow and a lot of overflow, so the road was closed. After a couple of days of waiting, we decided not to let the threat of overflow or the possibility of an $800 fine deter us, and we made it out to Tuk without a hitch. Oh -- the road was plowed about 2/3 of the way :)



What we drove almost 3,000 km to see: A pingo. The darkness precluded me from getting any better photos, especially of the famous Ibyuk Pingo, which is the largest pingo in Canada and still growing.

For those not in the know, a pingo is a super-nifty thing. It only grows in permafrost, and I'll spare you the details (unless you really want them), because there are a couple of different types, but one thing they all have in common is the hill is caused by ice. They are ice at the center, and these particular one are the only relief in the flat tundra of the Mackenzie delta. They can be quite large -- the one nearest the road, which we snowshoed up, is actually probably only half a pingo. It appeared to be eroded by the water. Nonetheless, it was about 60 feet high.

Even if the wonders of permafrost geology don't excite you, allow me to say: pingo pingo pingo! Try it! It's fun!

7 years

I am pretty sure it was 1998 when I wrote a song about what a small town we live in, about needing to get out occasionally. A lovely winter road trip song, and it had three verses: one about driving north, one about driving south, and one about running the dogs down a snowy trail. The first verse went like this:

Maybe we'll drive up north
where the mountains rise
and capture the light of the moon

Maybe we'll drive into
the winter night
where the sun's not yet up at noon

I did the things in the second and third verses, many times over. Many trips down south to the city, many trips along the trail for solitude. But the very first one I have never done until now.

Sorry, sorry! I had all kinds of cool stuff to write about, but then I was waiting for photos, and they never came. So then I waited for more cool stuff to happen, but it never did, and then apparently 18 days passed in which you all nearly swooned with longing for me to post once more.

And now perhaps you wil have to wait some more. This has been the busy season, but my last day of work for two weeks -- plus a bonus weekend! -- was today. So, the ballooning holiday travel plans are taking flight Sunday morning.

We will rouse ourselves well before the first glimmer of dawn, and take the truck to Whitehorse to the cabin. It's above freezing there right now, so we're not wasting a second, although it is a new moon. We will fill the truck with winter camping gear, skis, dogs, and unhealthy snacks. We will drive south into the sun.

From Whitehorse, we considered several plans -- to go to Skagway or Haines, either of which would be mild, damp, and full of lovely ocean. Or possibly to Atlin, "Little Switzerland," the scenic mountain town just a few hours from Whitehorse. Whitehorse itself has two more hours of sun than our town, and each of those destinations is even farther south.

So naturally, we're going up to Inuvik. Yes, that's what is better known as the barren Arctic coast to most of you, where the highway may or may not be closed doe to blowing snow, where the ice road we need to take to reach our final dream destination has not yet been opened for the year. We will make river crossings over ice, drive north of the Arctic circle, and late at night we will decide that camping in this weather sucks, and spring for a drafty $100 room in an old Atco trailer that passes for a hotel.

Pictures will follow, should there be enough light to take any.

Things I wish I'd been asked

I idenitfy as an honest person, and I pretend to be open. But there is so much of me hidden in onion-petal layers, things no one sees because I assume they would not want to know. I assume my touch is insubstantial, my feelings irrelevant, my praise or condemnation unheard. I assume you don't want to hear from me until proven otherwise, and when I do slip and offer myself and my thoughts unveiled it is as often as not unwelcome. I am a jumbled ball of contradictions in that way, oscillating between the extremes, too many things at once.

There are some things I wish I'd told people recently, things I wish they'd given me reason to tell. Each thing belongs to a different person, but I'm still stubborn as a mule, and until you ask you'll just have wonder if you're one of them:

If you'd asked, I would have told you I didn't call because I got home late all week.

If you'd asked, I would have told you that it was was my own self-deprecating sense of humour; ill-mannered, sometimes, ill-timed, ill-placed.

If you'd asked, I would have told you I missed you when you were gone and wondered frequently if you were okay.

If you'd asked, I would have told you that I think about you more than either of us want me to.

If you'd asked, I would not have have doubted our connection, our power to make it work.

Shop therapy

Well, after a long hard week (and not long and hard in a good way) that left me sad and exhausted and feeling like a boob (and not feeling boobs in a good way), I sovled my bad mood in the time-honoured manner: I shopped 'til I dropped, then had Thai food with my good friend M. A dinner of bar peanuts and whiskey is an acceptable alternative to the latter, but I'm on shift tonight anyhow.

Now, before you all make me turn in my feminist membership card, allow me to list what I bought:

*A lightweight fleece toque with earflaps
*Three books, including a guide to local hikes, paintings of sex through the ages, and a Harry Potter book.
*Three bags of Liquorice Allsorts.
*A christmas tree ornament for my mother shaped like an outhouse.

This is a wonderful country.

By the time we were done shopping, it was 35 below in town, and we were walking through the darkened streets, the lone pedestrians among the cars. I was wearing a sweater, a blazer, jeans, and a bandana (actually, truth be told, a cloth napkin) on my head. But I had had too much fun to be cold.

Doug says not to worry about it, but you know how it is. It's not so much that it's a big deal, it's just the feeling of being betrayed. And the feeling of having people say things that are so wrong, so off-base, and not being able to defend yourself or the truth. It doesn't matter how trivial those things are; they bring down the feelings that are big.

One thing I know is that people will hear what they choose to hear. This includes me and this includes you, despite our best efforts. This includes everyone to a greater or lesser extent.

Oh but why, why put the worst spin on something that you can? Why assume something that is hurtful? Why assume at all, when a quick question would have cleared things up? Why hurt, when there is no need? Isn't life enough work as it is?

Catchy slogan

The new CPR guidelines just came out (30 compressions: 2 ventilations, in case anyone was wondering, which has been shown to be more effective, laregly because the pressure that builds up after several compressions makes the circulation of blood more efficent, and blood stays oxygenated better than was previously thought, making breaths needed less often.)

But where was I? Oh yes. The new CPR guidelines just came out, and their motto is:

Do it fast, do it hard.


Hey teens! CPR is cool! Who knew?

Bubbles

It's eleven PM. About an hour ago I returned from a tasty Thanksgiving dinner, and needed to wrap up a few things in the pottery studio. The sun has been down for hours, but the lights in there spill bright yellow beams onto the workbench. Four cups of iced tea late in the evening is not conducive to sleep, but it is a marvelous thing to have in you when the world is silent, the snow is falling, and everyone else is house is asleep upstairs.

I am painting glaze onto the first batch of cups and bowls to come out of the kiln. One piece broken, the rest intact. Some cracks, some imperfections that will not stop me from being able to use these items. I am not thinking about the lattes and thick hot soups that will fill them later; I am thinking of nothing at all but the way I am holding my brush, the texture of the glaze, the concentration needed to make my hands steady and my eyes see the colors that will only turn up after firing. I am singing along to a Great Big Sea album and dancing in shearling boots on the cold floor.

I feel something strange inside me, like bubbles rising to the surface. There is no reason for this, nothing unusual, notihng spectacular, nothing but this ordinary day that almost three years of work have gone into making. Me, work done for the weekend, in my pajama bottoms and the shirt I wore to the party, puttering around in my own little messy studio. I realize this feeling is happiness, and it must be emerging from some well inside me that I don't recall ever seeing.

Last winter, I remember looking at everything I had and wondering why I could not feel it. I knew I was lucky; my brain could recognize it. Logically, with all I had been given and all I had made for myself, I should have been happy. But it's not possible to find happiness where none can exist, and with the stress and the dark and the endless days of too little sleep and everything else, I couldn't find happiness at the hot springs or in Hawaii or in chocolate or in love.

Last night, there was no reason for happiness to bubble up as if I were supersaturated with it and some had no choice but to come out of solution and seek the air. There were bright lamps and freshly bisqued pots and good songs and tasty food, enough to logically produce contentment. But the bubbles, they must have come from somewhere within me, some part of me myself, some spring of emotions that has finally decided to run warm and free and full.

I gaze out upon the blue laminate horizon, the sight of dishes fills my eyes. Dishes with caked-on pea soup, dishes with grease and flour and tomato sauce. Wine glasses with jellied sugar-sludge from last week's glass of wine. A mixing bowl, chocolate-caked whisk glues to the edge. As I survey my kingdom, I can't help but wonder if this was really the best day to be home sick. If only I could have chosen a morning for my head to explode into little sinusy chunks all over the pillow.

But what kind of rest am I going to get? Yesterday's paper is scattered across the dining table. Wood chips and ashes radiate out along the floor from the woodstove epicenter.

But the kiln is almost cool, and I have freshly cooked pots to glaze and fire. And the sun is almost up, skimming along the ridge across the valley. And there are cool people in the chat room. So, whether I choose to draw a topographic map of the ash layer on my living room floor or simply lie in bed overdosing on brownies, it's a good day to not work.

Is it hot in here or am I just old?

I am noticing an uncomfortable phenomenon that occurs during parent/teacher conferences. I first noticed it last year, when a particularly muscular, long-haired daddy came to talk about his kid. And this year it intensifed, as my kids have gotten smarter, and their parents are doctors and scientists. The problem?

The parents are hotties.

Not all of them, of course, but enough to make me worry. After all, the *kids* aren't hot. Oh no, they're just kids. But isn't it sick to think the parents are hot? I mean, they're parents! I'm young enough to be their.... oh GOD. I'm young enough to be their second wife. Or maybe even a little older than their second wife. If I'd gotten started as soon as it was biologically possible, I could have a kid in college now. Fuck!

Morrigan in the chat room says there's really nothing wrong with asking for Dr. So-and-so's cell number. I should tell him I like ot maintain a very close relationship with the parents of my students.

Doug is not so convinced. He didn't notice any hotties among the big-haired NP mommies and soldier daddies at his school. Also, he didn't see Dr. So-and-so, so how could he understand?

But none of these reactions solves the deep, dark, serious issue at hand: I think of myself as a kid, barely out of school myself. And yet somehow I've crossed the Great Divide. I'm closer in age to the parents than the kids. I don't get their music, I don't understand the way they dress, and I look nostaligically on the days when boys had hair that reached their ears and their collars -- and in those days they sometimes had collars, too.

And there's no turning back now. No matter how many body parts I get peirced, no matter how many thongs with "Porn Star" in rhinestones I wear, I am still a math teacher.

I have crossed over to the Dark Side. Thank goodness all these hotties are here too.

Wherein I detail my last few days, with a high ratio of words to actual events

Sunday I went skiing, then cut up some cars for practice. Not for skiing practice, but for practice using the Jaws of Life and shit. Except that real firefighters never say "Jaws of Life." We say "the jaws," or "the hurst tools," or "hydraulic tools," or something. I don't know if this is because we're too cool to sound like civilians or because we really don't know what the Jaws of Life are. Because I for one don't.

Skiing was excellent, though we only have three or four inches of snow. The tail at the top of my road (if you knwo where I live, skip this part, because it's supposed ot be a secret) is one of the best-maintained and loveliest trails around. It's only flaw is that it seems to dead-end two miles out, leaving only one option: a four-mile out and back. I knwo it goes farther, but I'm too lazy to find out.

Or maybe it's not laziness. Maybe it's my body trying to tell me something. Because yesterday I tried to puch it a little while jogging and get a decent workout, but ended up having my knee go out on me once more on the last uphill stretch of... oh... well, 1.75 miles of jogging over to my friend's house, a mile or so of walking with her, and maybe a little over 3 more miles of jogging until the knee blew out about 1.5 miles from home. Thank goodness I carry a cell phone and was within range, but Doug wasn't home anyhow. I called a couple times and finally, right as I took my last staggering step, he picked up the phone and came to drive me maybe half a mile home. I felt like such a loser. And being nearly hypothermic because I was dressed for jogging and had to stand still didn't help much.

I spent the evening icing my knee, then today alternating between sitting to help my knee and standing to relieve the pressure on my injured lower back, all the while trying to teach while getting my period and having cramps. I am a bit of a mess, but it will all sort itself out eventually. Until then, I will eat chocolate with abandon, skip fire training, and chat online. And call everyone whose phone number is in my address book and lives in a reasonable time zone, because I'm loooonely.

I'm certain he's dead by now, the guy whose bedside we were called to yesterday. Doug and I, we stayed for more than an hour in a small bedroom fixed up like a hospital room. It was less of a medical call than a mission of mercy. I could no more have left his mother alone with to listen to that horrible gasping breathing than I could have made someone else stay, so we stayed.

There was nothing we could do for him but clear his airway, give him some oxygen, and cool his forehead with moist cloths. He struggled to breathe. His open eyes were seeing nothing. And after months, maybe years, of an illness everyone knew was hopeless, when his conscious mind left his body still struggled on. There is nothing stronger than the will of a living creature to stay alive, to push through pain and injury, and he was breathing long after he should have stopped.

And was it the effort of breathing, every muscle in his chest straining -- was it only that that caused his eyes to water when his sister entered the room, when she whispered to him in sympathy, when it was clear that she knew it was his time to go?

The sun never managed to break through the fog yesterday, and the short day never grew brighter than the hours before dawn. Now, the trees are outlined in frost; their fallen leaves are hidden under the new snow. A few stray strands of green poke up from the ground. But even for them, there is nothing stronger than the desire to live. In half a year, it will be springtime, and the frozen twigs will thaw and push out tiny curled leaves. The garden will drink up melting snow and stretch itself toward the sun.

Life is strong. There is nothing stronger. In the house, they will clean the tiny bedroom and pack everything into boxes, and by spring they will have moved on.

Thursday afternoon

The sky is matte grey; the ground is covered with a sprinkling of snow. And I want a nice Polar Bear, which is a drink invented specifically for this weather. It's maple syrup and half and half and whatever alcohol you have handy, preferably whiskey. But instead, I'm working late and then going jogging with the dogs and baking sourdough bread and preparing for an exam Saturday and catching up on my grades since report cards come out next week. Damn me and my work ethic.

Or maybe I'll just find a good book and get the fire roaring and watch the snow fall from a supine postition on the shiny new floor of my living room.

Sunshine

Inspiration, for me, comes from the darkest of needs. It comes from longing, from keeping silent, from love and fear and anger and pain.

So maybe that's why I haven't written much lately. I don't mean to scare you folks, really I don't. Life is pretty decent, that's all.

And what is there to say about a job that I go to every day? The kids are good kids this year. The classes are more fun. I would rather not work, but since I must work, I am content to do a fairly decent job of fairly useful work.

What is there to say about my evenings? Doug does his schoolwork; sometimes we talk. Sometimes we clean house, and we just put in a laminate floor. It looks nice.

What is there to say about a walk in the woods on a crisp fall day? My feet are wet from crunching through the first ice that is forming in the shady spots. The skin of my arms is cool, my shoulders are warm from the sunshine. My heart is content; it does not hunger. I am not full enough of feeling to need to let it out; I am not hungry enough to desire more.

I owe you a meme

Ooh, first one, too. This is some kind of momentous occasion.

I first saw this one on frog's blog.

Leave your name and...
1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.
4. I'll try to say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal. You MUST.

I guess people without blogs get a pass on that last one, which is really quite clever of them.

Here are the two I owe so far:

Frog:

1. I still think you look like my friend E, though you don't really all that much.
2. Any of the songs I first heard on a mix tape you made.
3. Sofa grape
4. I'm glad you're not really me, and I'm glad you sometimes are.
5. Joining the club of people who wanted you to like me.
6. Something like a marmot, occasionally loud and mostly very private, that lives the most important parts of its life underground, where I can't see.
7. What makes you a cat person?

the therapeutic writer:

1. I'm jealous of your webcam.
2. Ooh, I forget what it's called, but any of those autobigogaphical songs where the singer is sort of cynical in an upbeat, amusing way.
3. Chlorophyll
4. Hm, I think whatever I say would probably only make sense to me.
5. First memory -- when you were travel agenting, and making me find better plane fares than my horrific ones.
6. Squirrel
7. How did you wind up in Halifax?

Second thought

In the end, I still want to keep secrets. To expose my heart as much as I would need to, I would have to cut right through it, would have to cut so deep that I would bleed feelings none of us could handle. Or there lies my fear.

No, I don't want any secrets. I want all my cards on the table, all of this laid out, discussed, processed, dissected. But I don't want to go first. I don't want to expose all that without some assurance. And anyhow, when you dissect something, doesn't it die? Maybe that's why, after all, I do not call when I should call. I erase my half-written posts. I don't say that name in front of him. I keep secets I don't want, but I need to.

Things I made recently IV

Plus, bonus: Things that Doug made too!

We went loess carving at the brand-new roadcut they made us, right at the end ofthe street. Okay, maybe they didn't make it for us, but I'd been wanting for years to try my hand at carving something more exciting than "I *heart* Johnny 4ever" in the silt cliffs around town. So on this blustery autumn day, we collected up some trowels and pottery implements and headed down to the corner to see what we could do.

Doug's frisky Darwin fish. We expect this will be the first one to get erased or otherwise vandalized.

Benevolent sun face. A little sunshine to brighten the drive home. I hope this one lasts through the winter. By Doug.

This one is mine. A nautical theme emerges, inspired by Doug's use of the notched flooring trowel to make background waves.

No sea is complete without a lovely mermaid beckoning from a shoal. Obviously, this one is mine as well.

Detail of the mermaid, who is a bit too long to photograph well.

Things I have made recently, III

I promised photos of the house so long ago, and it was never clean and perfect enough to be photo-ready. So I've changed my standards. Here are some photos from last night. To the left, the kitchen, in all of its glorious messiness.

Here is the view of one part of the living room area. Below the mirrors are the stairs down to the bedroom and stuff. Plus, bonus dog on the chesterfield!

View of the other side of the living room, and the corner with the wonderful papasan chair. These are the south-facing windows, that let in very little of a view but much-needed sunlight.

Tell me you love the orange walls!

Things I have made recently, II

Preserves. Okay, I didn't really make the cute green minty one in front, but I helped. The others are apple-cranberry relish, red currant jam, and mixed berry jam. There have also been two more since then -- mostly currant and lowbush cranberry. Soon there will be rhubarb sauce and randomberry low-sugar jam. If you want any of those, follow the bracelet instructions. The flavour of your choice may not be avaiable, so give me a couple of choices.

Things I have made recently, I

Three bracelets. If you want a similar bracelet, you should tell me in my comments, tell me what colors you like, and email me your address.

The Things I Gave Away*

As someone pointed out recently, although in a different context, bullet points are an excellent way to convince others there is organization in your random thoughts.

What I did right:
--Opened myself up to joy and pain.

What I did wrong:
--Opened myself up to joy and pain.

What I learned:
--That while I curse myself for being juvenile and emotional, other people tell me what I did was brave and honest.
--That maybe the people are right who think I'm a risk-taker, after all. Maybe I just assess risk differently.
--That I finally jumped off an emotional cliff, and while I'm floundering in the ocean below, I haven't drowned yet and I won't.
--That opening one damn doors leads to a thousand more, and most of those are best opened too, if only for the fresh air. That it gets easier every time, but not fast enough.
--That some people think there's still a chance, but I don't, and I'm not sure I want there to be.
--That, just like you learned in grade seven, you never, ever admit you have romantic feelings unless you want to ruin a friendship, however incipient or nebulous or imagined. That you can never go backwards. Or can you? Maybe that's something I haven't learned.

What I haven't learned:
--The same thing we never learn. What happens next.

* from Indigo Girls' "Blood and Fire"

Connecting

What does the border look like between too much and not enough?

Are the edges of myself sharply defined, a fence along the edge of a field? Here, the neat rows of wheat, the lines of corn, the green bundles of beans. There, the tangle of brush, the messy undergrowth, the puddles and vines and debris intermingled.

Are the walls of my soul like a cloud, something you can only see from far away? From inside, I am translucent, letting in the world but distorting it. From a distance, I appear solid, have distinction, have a form. When you stand at the edge, you feel the cloud slowly sweep over you, but you can no longer see it clearly. You can only sense the moisture on your skin, taste the clean scent of damp earth on your lips.

Are the pieces of myself like a star? Impossibly remote, unbelievably distant. You can see the light, you can feel the heat, but canot cross the gulf to reach. And even a star, giving its light wheher seen or unseen, eventually burns itself out, collapses under the weight of what is left when its light is gone.